Sound of the Month
The sound of the month is…
tomato plants!
Did you know that plants produce sounds?!
This is a recording of ultrasonic sounds made by stressed out tomato plants. The plants make more sounds when they are dehydrated. The sounds were moved down into the human range of hearing, and there is compression on the spaces between sounds to create a shorter file.
Source: Khait et al 2023
Previous Sounds of the Month
Sound of the Month
The sound of the month is…
a reef fish grunting!
The static sound is snapping shrimp, and the grunting sound is a fish! I recorded this fish off the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico. This recording and spectrogram are featured in my paper on nighttime fish sounds and in my song Night Fish. The grey image you see is the spectrogram of the sound – a visualization of the sound in which the x axis is time, the y axis is sound frequency (~pitch), and the darker the color, the more intense the sound is. Can you match low grunts of the fish with the dark splots on the spectrogram? You can learn more about interpreting these sounds in the free Ocean World of Sound 30 Day Challenge.
The sound of the month is…
7 month old human!
Flashback to a conversation I had with my daughter when she was 7 months old. Babies have amazing and broad abilities to explore pitch and other aspects of vocalizing, which they gradually “lose” as they increasingly focus on what is important in the language they are learning to speak.
The sound of the month was…
spiny lobster!
Spiny lobsters rub their antenna on their head sort of like playing a stringed instrument, creating a scratchy sound. In this underwater recording I collected near Isla Contoy, Mexico, you can hear the crackling sound of snapping shrimp and several clear spiny lobster scratches!
The sound of the month was…
the MesoAmerican Coral Reef during the full moon.
Feel free to listen to a little, or a lot, or put it on loop as a calming background for working!
Want to listen to more? Browse music related posts below
Song Stories: Cell
Cell has multiple layers of meaning. I hesitate to talk about what it means to me, because, it’s more important what it means to you. I think it’s okay though if I discuss a few themes and references I was thinking about when I was writing. And I’ll note that this was a song that…
Cello & Ocean Sounds
I had a great time playing for the Passages event at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, amidst the ocean-themed art exhibit Sea Marks by Christina Lorena Weisner. I played three sets, with three different underwater soundscapes. The first was a recording I took in the Sound in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where…
Song Stories: Ocean Unicorn
Whether or not you believe in land unicorns, the sea boasts the most preposterous creatures that swim around with a horn on their head. Okay okay, the “horn” on a narwhal is actually a tusk, a prolonged canine tooth. They like it chilly, hanging out in Arctic waters, and they also dive very deep. Narwhals…
Playlist for “What’s Next For Corals?” Plenary at AGU24
Here are my compositions featured in the “What’s Next For Corals?” Art and Science Plenary at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. Fantasmas del Arrecife / Ghosts of the Reef – October 2023. Every sound sample in the piece was recorded underwater in the MesoAmerican Reef by me and the Ocean World of Sound team, and includes…
Heather on Dr. Raven Baxter’s Podcast “The Science of Life”
Word got to me that Dr. Raven Baxter needed an expert on dolphin sex to explain some things. So we ended up in a hilarious, horrifying, educational discussion. Listen in… if you think you can handle it. #FlipperIsALie #SpongeBobIsALie #BarnaclePenis #Music #MysteriesOfTheOcean
Sound and Plants
When we think about plants, we often think about smelling or eating them. But what about listening to plants? Following on my Expert Is In presentation at the U.S. Botanic Garden, on Saturday June 1st I will present an interactive online lecture exploring how plants make and respond to sounds, shape soundscapes, and inspire sound…